by Tom Lowe
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
O’Brien ignored the mob of reporters, the click of cameras and the microphones shoved in his face as he approached his Jeep. Susan Schulman stepped in front of him with her cameraman behind her left shoulder. She extended her Channel Nine microphone. “We understand there has been another murder, the first being the death of one of our interns, Nicole Bradley, and the kidnapping of Jason Canfield, whose body might have just been found. This is connected to you finding the U-boat, correct Mr. O’Brien?”
O’Brien disregarded Schulman, walking around her and the cameraman. She shouted, “Are these deaths tied to the uranium?”
O’Brien stopped, his eyes narrowed. “Have you made sure family has been notified before you identify a body, or is this how far you’ll go for a fucking soundbite?”
“We’re reporting live, Mr. O’Brien.”
“You may be live, but any semblance of civility with you is dead. Now move the hell out of my way.”
As O’Brien got in his Jeep, his cell rang. He recognized the number again, Eric Hunter. “So now the news media know Jason was kidnapped,” Hunter said.
“You watching Channel Nine in some bar?”
“Matter fact, I am.”
“What do you want?”
“To talk. Where are you going to be in fifteen minutes?”
“Chapman’s Fish House. I want to find that homeless man you told me about.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
As O’Brien pulled into Chapman’s parking lot, he looked across the street to Saint Paul’s Church. There was a bus stop bench in front of the church but no one was sitting on it. He parked and got out. The smell of fresh-caught fish came from a truck as the driver unloaded the order. O’Brien’s cell rang. It was Maggie Canfield. “Sean! Is Jason okay?” Her voice was ragged, desperate.
“Maggie … we’re doing all we can to find him-”
“Is he alive … is my son alive?”
“I believe so. We’re going to find him and-”
“Please, Sean, find him. Every minute he's gone could mean ….” Her voice cracked. “I'm coming to wherever you and the police are-”
“No, Maggie. Stay home. Stay off your phone in case he calls.”
“I can’t take another loss … not after his father ….” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Please keep him alive ….” She disconnected.
O’Brien looked at his phone for a second, started to place it in his pocket as it rang again. Dave Collins was on the line. He said, “We met with Daytona PD and Volusia SO detectives. The body we thought might be Jason’s, turned out not to be. They found the guy in an alley behind an abandoned pool hall. Place is littered with syringes, smells like a sewer. It’s a communal commode. Detectives know the dead guy, gang-banger and user. It’s not Jason. Where are you?”
“Looking for a homeless man in the vicinity of Chapman’s.”
“Better luck there. I think the homeless people gave this place up.”
“The feds still with you?”
“Yes. Paul, Ron and Lauren. All present and counted.”
O’Brien said nothing.
“We’ll be there in twenty minutes, Sean.” Dave disconnected as Eric Hunter got out of a pick-up truck and walked toward O’Brien.
Hunter said, “Jason’s mother is almost catatonic over this. Woman’s lost her husband-”
“So let’s make sure she doesn’t lose her son.”
Hunter pursed his lips and blew out like he was cold, looked across at the church, then at O’Brien. “If we’d started on it earlier together maybe Jason would be going on that next charter trip with you.”
“Who are you?”
“I told you, I’m a friend of Jason’s family. Knew his dad for a long time.”
O’Brien made sure his face reflected nothing. He nodded. “So what does a friend of the family do for a living?”
“Day job is working with Homeland Security. I can build a motorcycle or take one apart. Pretty good with my hands.”
O’Brien was quiet a long beat. Then he looked closely in Hunter’s eyes as he spoke. “The day Nick, Jason, and I found that U-boat, the day we dove down and found the U-235 canisters, Jason had called you. Probably coming back from sea. I saw your number on his phone that day. It was one of two calls. The other one was to his girlfriend. She’s dead. Who do you work for?”
“Right now I’m working for Jason. Trying to save his life-”
“That’s not good enough!”
“It has to be, okay?”
“It’s not okay! Too much is at stake. You tell me you got an eyewitness description of the hostiles from some homeless guy. An anonymous witness.”
“What are you getting at?”
“You were one of two people who knew about the sub and the cargo. Nicole, the girlfriend, didn’t know until she got Jason drunk and seduced it from him. But you, his surrogate father figure, he probably told you. And then who did you tell? Somebody in the mob? American? Russian? Some Islamic radicals who’ll stop at nothing to acquire enriched uranium? Who’s paying you?”
“You have quite an overactive imagination, O’Brien.”
“How did that reporter, Susan Schulman, know our boat was going to be stopped by the Coast Guard? Did you call her? Did you want this out in the public for some asinine bureaucratic or covert reason?”
“He’s returned,” Hunter said, looking over O’Brien’s shoulder.
O’Brien was hesitant to turn around for a moment. He stepped back from Hunter and looked at the bus stop. A man sat there staring straight at him.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Eric Hunter shook his head, glanced down at the parking lot and then looked at O’Brien. “You’re wrong about me, but let’s see what he has to say.”
The homeless man watched them approaching. He grinned, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and asked, “Anybody got a quarter or two?”
“Sure,” said Hunter, peeling off a couple of one-dollar bills.
“Much obliged,” said the man. He was in his mid-fifties, matted dark hair, swimming pool blue eyes through slits of black dirt, new dirt on top of old dirt. He had a sour smell of old sweat and cheap wine.
“Now,” said Hunter, “you know, Robert, the church folk won’t let you have dinner in there if you’ve been drinking.”
The man sighed like the last ounce of breath just left his body. “Only had a swallow or two around noon.”
“And you haven’t eaten, right?”
“That’s why I’m here. You can get supper in there two nights a week.” He nodded toward the church, his eyes suddenly filled with buried thoughts.
“Robert Ingham this is Sean O’Brien. Tell Sean exactly what you saw when they kidnapped the young man.”
“I saw the young fella put some boxes in his truck, ‘bout the time he opened his door, this blue van, a Ford, pulled up and these two men jumped out. One of them stuck a gun in the dude’s ribs while the other pushed him into the van. I stood up to yell about the time two semi-trucks blew by. When the trucks were gone, so was the van.”
“Can you describe the men who took Jason?” O’Brien asked.
“Jason … that’s his name?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a fine name.” His eyes faded a moment and then returned. “One was tall, shoulders like a football player, bald. Other one was blondish. I’d say medium size.”
“Was there anyone else in the van?” O’Brien asked. “A driver, maybe?”
“Not that I could see. One of ‘em dudes who jerked him into the van was the driver.”
“Thank you,” O’Brien said. “If there’s something else, how do I find you?”
“I’m usually here Monday and Friday’s ‘bout this time. I had me a bicycle ‘till somebody stole it from my camp.”
“Camp?”
“Yeah, I used to sleep under the I-95 bridge downtown. But it’s got so damn crazy, teenage kids comin’ in and beating up people like me. T
hree of ‘em like to beat me to death last winter. I stay in the woods, west side of town off Wilson Avenue. I got me a little tent and a sleepin’ bag. I don’t bother nobody.”
O’Brien handed the man a twenty dollar bill.
“Now do you believe me?” asked Hunter as he and O’Brien walked across Chapman’s parking lot.
“I questioned whether we could find him again. We did. End of that story, but it’s the beginning of the rest of the story. I want to know where you fit into all of this.”
“Jason was kidnapped, we hope not killed. It shouldn’t have happened. His girlfriend is dead. Others may die if they’re in the way of whoever’s doing this. You need my help. I can dive down there with you and pull up the U-235.”
O’Brien was silent for a long beat, studying Hunter. “We brought it up.”
“You did? When?”
“Two nights ago. Nick and I dove back down. We off-loaded it in a storage unit, stored where only three people knew the location. Jason wasn’t one of them.”
“So they kidnapped him for information he didn’t have?”
“He initially didn’t know. Nick got boozed up, and while ranting to me, Jason overheard him. The HEU was just stolen. Storage manager was shot through the head. This tells me they got the information out of Jason. His immediate value to them may be gone.”
Hunter grunted. “How much uranium did they get?”
“Two canisters, probably enough to make a dirty bomb if they wanted.”
Dave Collins pulled his Land Rover into the parking lot. Dave, Lauren Miles, Ron Bridges, and Paul Thompson all hit the ground almost running. Nick walked behind them. O’Brien saw something in Hunter’s eyes, the subliminal recognition, the discovery and concealment coming in the blink of an eye. But it was all the time O’Brien needed. Hunter knew one of the four people.
Lauren said, “We have a multi-agency task force setting up near the U.S. Attorney’s office on the second floor of the federal building. Secretary of State and Homeland Security want hourly reports. Volusia detectives said that, when they were here earlier, the manager told them Jason bought twenty pounds of bait fish and left the store. He said no one in the store saw the abduction.”
“Guy across the street,” Hunter began, “a homeless man, said he saw two men push Jason into a blue Ford van. He said they put a pistol in his ribs and kidnapped him.”
“I’m sorry, who you are?” asked Paul Thompson.
O’Brien studied Thompson’s eyes, his body movement for a hint of deceit.
“Eric Hunter. I’m a family friend, also working with Homeland.”
O’Brien introduced Hunter to the others and looked in each person’s eyes as they greeted Hunter. Nothing. O’Brien said, “There’s a camera on the left corner of the building, pointed toward the parking lot. Did the SO look at the hard drives?”
Thompson said, “They’re doing that now at our headquarters.”
“Tape or drives?” O’Brien asked.
“Drives,” said Agent Bridges. “They downloaded the data. Drives are still in there.”
O’Brien said, “Maybe the one glass eye of the camera will give us a better picture than what a homeless man saw from across the street. Let’s go have a look.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
They lay hidden under a green army blanket on a wooden table in a small warehouse. Yuri Volkow entered the room, nodded at Andrei Keltzin and Zakhar Sorokin. He looked at Jason tied in the chair and said, “You have proved most valuable. Let us see what we have recovered from that storage room.” Volkow slowly removed the blanket from the canisters as if he was trying not to awake what slept inside.
In the middle of the table, two long metal cylinders lay side-by-side. The late afternoon sun splintered through the window giving the cylinders an antique bronze look. Still visible were the labels on the right side of both containers: U-235.
“This,” began Volkow, his voice a mix of arrogance and authority, “is going to do three things. It will settle a long-standing score between the motherland and the Americans from 1945 to 1950, the Venona Project, they called it. Second, these cylinders give us supreme reign because we decide who acquires the power inside them. And, third, we will be compensated well.”
Sorokin said, “We have the computer equipment assembled in the next room. Everything is secure, non-traceable. You can begin the auction whenever you wish.”
“Perhaps the first bid should come from those who almost acquired it before we did, that asshole Mohammed Sharif and his comrades. Will they use the power to strike the Americans, especially since it is already in this country, or will they export it to Syria or Iran?”
“Does it make a difference?”
Volkow smiled and stroked the barnacled-surface of one cylinder like a man caressing a sacred object. He looked up at Sorokin and Keltzin. “These are two of more … correct, Jason Canfield? More buried on a beach?”
“Maybe,” Jason said, the ropes dulling the blood circulation to his hands. “The old woman told Sean that the Germans buried something.”
“Where is this old woman?”
“I don’t know.”
Volkow sneered. “If we locate the other cylinders, we will begin the bidding at fifty-million dollars. Put images of these on the site.”
“Should we not find the remaining U-235 first?” asked Keltzin.
“This will arouse the appetite of our buyers.”
“Perhaps the other cylinders do not exist.” Sorokin said. “What if the Americans found them in 1945? Or they may not have been found and never will be.”
“The target area has been narrowed. Also, based on what Canfield told us, this O’Brien either knows or might be able to find the rest of the U-235. We’ll offer him a motivation, if you know what I mean, and a deadline. Set up the video camera.”
Lauren Miles pointed toward the image on the monitor and said, “Freeze that.” The Chapman’s Fish House manager clicked the mouse in his hand and the image on the screen stopped playing. O’Brien, Cronus, Collins, Bridges, Thompson and Hunter stood by the monitor and watched. Lauren continued, “There they are, coming out of the dark van under the mimosa tree.” It was a wide shot. The images on a computer monitor showed the entire parking lot. Two men walked quickly over to Jason’s truck, less than fifty feet from the van.
“The kid doesn’t even see them coming,” Thompson said.
“Play it,” Lauren said to the manager. The video continued, the men moving casually toward Jason as he placed the boxes in his truck bed and opened the driver’s side door.
Dave grimaced. “This is hard to watch.” The images showed no struggle. Jason was surprised, his head whipping right and left to look at both men. In ten seconds, he was inside the blue van, one man climbing in the back seat with him.
Eric Hunter looked away. “They’ve had him long enough to get what they want.”
“Yeah, they got the location of the storage unit out of him,” Dave said.
O’Brien’s cell rang. He looked at the number. “It’s Jason!”
“Put it on speaker.” Hunter said.
O’Brien hit the speaker button. “Jason ….”
“Sean! They’re holding me!”
“Where are you?”
“At an undisclosed location,” Yuri Volkow said.
“Who is this?” O’Brien demanded.
“I’m the man who can slit Jason’s throat. Are you near a computer, O’Brien?”
“Yes.”
“Very good. Go to Anonev.com. I will spell it for you. A…n…o…n…e…v.”
O’Brien typed in the address and an image of Jason sitting in a chair appeared. A man, only visible from the chest down, held a knife to Jason’s throat.
“Jas-” began Nick as O’Brien raised his hand for silence.
The others crowded around the screen. O’Brien held up one hand to make sure no one spoke. He said to Volkow, “Don’t hurt him. He’s a kid-not even twenty.”
“My father was on
ly twenty-five when your people killed him.”
“I’m sorry to hear that … what were the circumstances?”
“Similar to what we have in the world today. The cold war never ended. It will never thaw as long as your country continues its world meddling.”
“Who is this?” O’Brien asked.
“How much do you want to see Jason live?” Volkow pulled Jason’s head back with one hand, placed a knife against his neck. “His carotid artery is less than one inch from the blade.” Then he began cutting.
“Oh dear God …,” Lauren whispered.
“Wait!” shouted O’Brien.
Jason screamed, his body visibly trembling. Volkow held the knife, and blood trickled down Jason’s neck, looking into the camera, tears spilling from his eyes.
“What do you want?” O’Brien asked.
“I want the rest of the cargo. It is rightfully ours. There are other canisters. We know this. You have forty-eight hours from now to deliver them to a destination I choose. If you do not, the next time you see Jason, you will watch him die. You cannot find him, but we can find you. All GPS and tracking devices on his mobile have been deactivated. But you can leave a text message to communicate. The clock starts right now.”
The screen faded to black.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Lauren Miles said, “Ron, I don’t care what that asshole says about deactivating Jason’s phone. Let’s see if we can triangulate a location from a cell tower. Maybe we’ll get something. I’ll call Mike Gates. We’ll see if the cyber team can get a trace from this computer to that website. Maybe there’s something there that will give us a location, lead us to Jason. They’ve got to be within a few miles of us. But where?”
Agent Bridges said, “The unsub’s voice. Did anybody notice the slightest hint of an accent? German? Russian, maybe? Didn’t sound Middle Eastern.”
